


In Which Dick Grayson's Life is Made Miserable by An Evil Author

by jerseydevious



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Traumatized Dick Grayson, Worried Parent Bruce Wayne, check chapters for individual trigger warnings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-09 03:02:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20846456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/pseuds/jerseydevious
Summary: I'm attempting Whumptober this year, and I want to do as many of the prompts as I can, with the only catch being theyallhave to be hurt!Dick with his Batdad to the rescue. I would apologize for being the way that I am, except I, for one, am having too much fucking fun.





	1. Shaky Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Depending on how much fun I have doing this, I might actually occasionally update outside of Whumptober, just in the spirit of bloodsport. We'll see how it goes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for acute myeloid leukemia.

Dick knocked the kickstand down with the toe of his boot and slid off his bike. He moved to unclip his helmet, but his gloved fingers met empty air where the chinstrap would ordinarily be, and he jogged up the stairs quickly—if Alfred opened the door and saw him standing by his bike with no helmet, there’d be hell to pay. The night was going to be rough enough already without Alfred’s ire bruising it. 

He let himself in the massive front door—probably, Alfred had swung by to unlock it when Dick set off the perimeter alarms. From there Dick followed the smell of something cooking to the kitchens, and was hit almost immediately by a small torpedo to the gut when he entered the doorway. 

Usually, Dick could stand his ground, for Damian’s customary attack-greeting; but today he was knocked flat and Damian held a fork to Dick’s throat, grinning like a crocodile. “Your guard was down. Pitiful, Grayson.”

Dick wheezed. It seemed like Damian was getting bigger by the day. “Get your germ-coated fork out of my face, you little shit.”

The fork was removed. Damian was still grinning, so Dick pushed himself up and wrapped an arm around Damian’s neck, using his free hand to scrub his knuckles through Damian’s hair. The kid had taken to styling it, recently, with gel, which meant Dick’s knuckles were coated in grease, but it was worth it for Damian’s indignant squawking, and then his surreptitious attempt to fix it.

“Leave him alone, Damian,” Bruce rumbled, from where he was leaning against the counter. He had a mug of coffee in hand, and Dick would guess he hadn’t been to sleep the night before, and Dick’s guesses were rarely wrong. 

“Let him up!?” Damian shrieked. “Father, you simply must be joking, did you see the way he  _ accosted _ me—”

“No, I didn’t,” Bruce said, flatly. “But I did see the way you accosted  _ him. _ In your chair, and finish eating. If you’re going to get thirds, you’re going to eat them.”

Damian sniffed angrily. The anger was short-lived. The second he sat down, he was tucking into his dinner again. Another development; Damian had gone from picky and impossible to feed to eating anything that wasn’t nailed down and then some. 

Tim jerked his head to the seat next to him. Dick eased himself into it, grateful that he didn’t have to stand there and debate on which free chair to take; the one between Cass and Damian, or the one between Tim and what was, presumably, Bruce’s seat. 

“You’re late,” Tim whispered, while Steph and Damian argued animatedly over the last of the rolls. 

Dick shrugged. “Always am,” he said, simply. 

Tim frowned, because of course that was an answer that Tim would see right through; it was probably one of the worst lies Dick had ever offered. Dick was, typically, several hours early for family dinner.

“Good God,” Bruce interrupted. He stalked off. 

“Oh, great, the one night I’m here to see him, you chase him away,” Dick said. “C’mon, just cut the roll in half.”

Steph stood and leaned forward, hands cupped over her mouth. “BRUCE! IF WE GIVE YOU THE LAST ROLL WILL YOU COME BACK?” she shouted. 

Bruce reappeared in the doorway. He was holding another bag of rolls, glowering at it like it had personally offended him. He threw it at Damian. 

“These aren’t toasted,” Damian whined. 

“Would you like it better if I took every bag of rolls we own and set them on fire on the lawn,” Bruce said. “They’ll be plenty toasted, then, and I am three entire seconds from doing exactly that.”

“Campfire,” Cass said, her eyes glinting. She stabbed a thick chunk of roast with her fork and stuffed it in her mouth. 

Bruce grunted, lifting his mug from where he’d left it on the counter. “Not tonight. If we have a campfire without Alfred, we will inevitably mess up the lawn  _ somewhere, _ and my judicious estimate of what will happen after that is that we will be on his shit list for the next nine months.” 

Damian took his second roll from the bag Bruce had brought. “Your threats are hollow, Father,” he said, and then he ate half of the roll in one bite. 

“Alfred’s out?” Dick asked. 

“Poker night,” Tim said.

The bickering only continued from there, bouncing between Steph and Damian and Steph and Cass and Damian and Tim, and Dick only had to offer his input in the right place every couple of minutes. Bruce didn’t intervene again—when Dick turned back to look at him, he was scowling at his phone and typing furiously, which was situation normal, for him. Most conversations made Bruce look like that. There was a conversation that Dick needed to have with him tonight, and Dick didn’t doubt for a moment that Bruce would scowl exactly like that all the way through it, right up until the end. 

Eventually the subject turned to movies—tradition was, family dinners were followed by family movies. It was a tradition Dick and Bruce had started when it’d been only the two of them and Alfred.

Dick waved them off. “I have no opinion, you guys go pick something out and I’ll be there in a minute. I’m gonna try prying Bruce away from his phone for five whole minutes.” 

Tim snickered. “Good luck.”

At the mention of his name, Bruce grunted and did nothing else. 

It took another half an hour, but eventually Dick’s siblings—or, something more complex and weird, in Steph’s case—trickled out of the kitchen and inevitably to the home theater. Damian was the last to leave, reluctant to leave Dick alone, and maybe at any other time Dick would’ve spent the whole night by his side. But there was a conversation he needed to have. 

He tried structuring the words in his head; should he start with the story of it? He rolled around  _ I thought I had a cold and it turns out it was cancer, isn’t that just wonderful _ in his head. Should he present it devoid of any other details, simply,  _ I have acute myeloid leukemia, _ without anything to dress it up? 

A plate thunked on the table in front of Dick. 

“You didn’t eat,” Bruce said.

“I had pizza with Wally.”

Bruce’s brow raised. “I taught you to be a better liar than that. Eat, now. I can see your hands shaking from here.”

Dick laid his palms flat against the table. He knew he couldn’t eat—stress made him nauseous, and if he ate now, he’d just throw up on Bruce’s shoes. Which, in all likelihood, were several hundred dollar shoes. “Can—can I talk to you, actually.”

Bruce must have read something about the gravity of it on Dick’s face, because he pulled out the chair beside Dick and settled down. “Hit me,” he said.

“I had a question,” Dick said. He sucked in a breath. “A lot of questions, actually, but I think I’ll be fine if you just answer this one. When you were first starting out. When you didn’t know what you were doing, didn’t even know if it was possible, didn’t know if you were good enough. You had to know that, more likely than not, you were going to die. That your death was a ninety-nine-to-one kind of safe bet. How—how did you—what did it feel like?”

Bruce studied him. His brows folded over his eyes, which darted over Dick’s face, undoubtedly cataloguing all of Dick’s tells and trying to fit the pieces together. “Worth it. It felt like it was worth it.”

“Do you still feel that way?” Dick asked. 

“Always,” Bruce replied, without missing a beat. “Dick. I need you to tell me what’s going on.” 

“I need your advice,” Dick said. “Because I’m dying, and I don’t—I don’t know, I don’t—”

Dick stopped. Bruce’s hand had wrapped around Dick’s wrist, and he was staring at Dick severely. There was no more of the darting, from earlier, now there was only his eyes meeting Dick’s with vicious intent. “Come again,” he rasped. 

Dick turned away. He couldn’t say this part to Bruce’s face, and if that made him a coward, then a coward he would be. “Acute myeloid leukemia. Found out yesterday. Leslie says I have to start treatment as soon as possible. It’s—I told you I was sick a lot, recently. Guess, guess we know why, now.”

There was a long silence. Bruce’s grip on Dick’s wrist grew tight but not crushing, and eventually Dick managed to glance at Bruce’s face—and he saw Bruce’s eyes screwed shut, and there was no grimace, no scowl, just the expression of a man trying very hard to keep himself from falling apart.

_ I did that, _ Dick thought.

“Bruce,” Dick whispered. 

Bruce straightened, opened his eyes. His expression wasn’t hard, like Dick expected it to be—it was gutted, and the open terror in his face sent a thrill of fear flying through Dick’s chest. “You’re moving back in. There will be no arguing about it. You’ll need care, and we are family and that is what family does. I’m not expecting you to like it. I am expecting you to do it.”

Dick swallowed. He’d needed this. He’d needed someone to tell him the game plan, someone to take the wheel—he’d needed Batman to come swinging in, growling  _ you’re in over your head, Robin. _ Any other time in his life, it would have grated on Dick’s nerves endlessly, Dick would have started the mother of all fights—but today, Dick wanted someone to do it for him. He wanted Batman. 

“Thank you,” Dick murmured. 

But Bruce wasn’t finished yet. “You’re wrong,” he said, and now his face was hard, and determined. “You’re not dying. You will live.”

Dick felt his shoulders slump. “You can’t prove that, Bruce.” 

“I can’t,” Bruce said, softly. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Dick’s temple. “But I can believe in it. You asked me how it felt, to know that it was a high probability that I would die. I said that I felt it was worth it. It is worth it because it is something I believe in, and all of the training in the world is not going to change the fact that there will be a time when that training is not enough. That is when the belief kicks in, when the belief is all you have.”

A lump was solidifying in Dick’s throat, but he croaked out, “Bruce, I’m so sorry,” anyway, and then Bruce pulled him into a hug and Dick sobbed hoarse cries into his shoulder for what felt like hours. 


	2. Explosion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for lots of blood loss and impending mortality (that doesn't happen), that sort of thing.

The ringing in his ears deafened him—white noise, white noise, and there was a whiteness in front of him, a burning. That would be the fire.  _ Get away from the fire,  _ Dick thought at himself, and he tried to drag himself backwards but the ache in his gut turned into a shredding and he cried out and dropped back to the ground. It took several moments, several precious moments, for his hand to find the comm in his ear, but he did and then he took his palm and pressed it against the wound in his gut. He could feel the heat of his own blood through his gloves. Was he wearing gloves? He was.

“—report,” was snarled in his ear. “Report, dammit. Nightwing!”

“Batman,” Dick sighed. 

“Are you injured,” Batman bellowed. “What is your location. Oracle, get me his location now.” 

“I can’t! His tracker’s scrambled—something’s interfering with the signal, I can’t—I can get you the location of his bike.”

“M’somewhere,” Dick said. “Shrap… nel. Explosion. Hurts, God, fuck, it hurts. Bruce.”

“Sending you coordinates now,” Barbara said. 

“Switch Nightwing and I to a private channel,” Bruce growled. 

“I’m not doing that,” Barbara said. “If something happens—”

“Don’t!” Robin—Tim—shouted. “Don’t, no, wait—”

“Do,” Batman said, voice thunderous in the way that reminded Dick of black skies and blacker days with the rain pelting down and the lightning carving the air, “as I say.  _ Now.” _

There was a long pause, and then the clacking of keys, and a low tone.

“Dick, I need you to tell me how badly you’re hurt,” Bruce said, softly. 

“Lotta… lotta blood, B.”

A sharp intake of breath. “Can you tell me how much?”   
  


“M’head hurts.”

“I know. Sweetheart, I know. I’m on my way. Can you give me any more details about where you are.”

“Docks,” Dick rasped. “Tha’s almost m’name. Dicks. Hah.”

Bruce went quiet. “That doesn’t narrow it down.” 

“Please go fast,” Dick mumbled. “It hurts. It’s—it’s—there was, car bomb, it was a… trap. Not for us. Someone else. Triggered by motion, I think, it’s _ —fuck, _ this hurts, B, it really fucking hurts.”

“I know,” Bruce said. “I need you to hold the wound. Are you pressing down on it? You need to stem the blood flow as much as you can.”

Dick pushed his hands deeper against the wound. He felt himself scream more than he heard it. 

“Sweetheart,” Bruce said, helplessly. Dick could hear it, that helplessness, in a note of rage and panic in Bruce’s voice. “I’m on my way.”

“Bruce,” Dick sobbed. “Fuck. Fuck. I can’t do this, I can’t, I can’t—”

“You can and you will,” Bruce snarled, his voice suddenly heavy and intent. 

The sky above him, the winking lights of far-off skyscrapers, the reddish haze of a Gotham night, began to blur. “Fuck,” Dick whispered. “It’s, I, I—we had good times. Didn’t we?”

Bruce swallowed audibly. “The best,” he said, thickly. “We have good times. We will have good times. You are not dying tonight.”

“The best,” Dick repeated. 

“Dick. Dick, I want you to think about the first night I took you out, your first night as Robin. Tell me about it.”

Dick blew out a breath. His skin was no longer prickly and hot with the pain; it was cold, and clammy, and everything was feeling distant and far away, like something he was seeing at the end of a long tunnel instead of something he existed alongside. “Thrilled. I was… thrilled. Best—best thing that ever happened to me. It was, it was… the only thing I did was help a little old lady cross the street, b-but I did something. I did something. I did… thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. I haven’t saved you yet. Hold tight.”

“But you have,” Dick said. “I needed you. An’ you were there, whenever I did. You were… exactly what I needed. Thank you.”

“Dick,” Bruce said, strangled. 

“I’m sorry for—disappointin’ you so much.”

“Is that what you think,” Bruce hissed. “Is that what you—Dick Grayson, you have never listened to me in your life, but you will listen to me now, do you understand? I have only ever been proud of you. Proud to know you, to have been lucky enough to know you. Proud that I might conceive of you as, even if only in my own mind—as… a son. My son.”

Dick’s shoulders jerked in a sob and pain rocketed through him, burning his nerves like a crown fire. “Hurry,” he choked out. 

Bruce’s voice took on a new sense of urgency. “Listen to me. Listen to my voice. Answer a question when I ask it. Do you understand?”

“Y-yeah.”

“You will live, do you understand?”

“I do,” Dick said. 

Bruce hummed. “I’ve found your bike. Can you tell me how far away you are?”

“At… at least a block. Lost… lotta blood.”

“I’m coming. Just hold on, sweetheart.”

“Always liked it when you called me that,” Dick said, with a cough—blood flecked his mouth, and he could taste it, the metallic taste of it, and it was the last thing he remembered until his head was lifted from the ground and his eyes slid open. 

“Where?” Dick mumbled.

“Thank God,” Bruce whispered. A whiskery kiss was pressed to Dick’s forehead. “Thank God.”

“Still… kickin’,” Dick rasped. 

Bruce laid Dick’s head back down on the asphalt gently. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. You can’t afford to lose more. I’m going to bandage you, and then carry you to the car, and then Alfred will stitch you up. Do you hear me?”

“Sure, dad,” Dick said. Bruce’s face, beneath the cowl, went slack. “Had to… try it. ‘Least the once. In case I die. Bit weird, innit?” 

Bruce dropped a kiss into Dick’s hair. “No dying,” he growled. 

“Sounds good,” Dick said. 

After Bruce bandaged Dick’s wound, he’d scoop Dick into his arms and carry him to the Batmobile and they’d roar into the Cave in ten or fifteen minutes, depending on how many traffic laws Bruce broke. And then Alfred would put Dick under and stitch him up, and Bruce would likely shout a lot until he collapsed in a chair by Dick’s side, and when Dick woke up Bruce would be there as Bruce always was—silent, stony. There would be a blue straw in his water cup and if Dick asked, Bruce would get him ice chips, and sneak him ice cream instead of jello. Recovery would suck, as it usually did, but Dick would eventually be back on his feet and eventually, he’d have to go through it all over again. 

But he was alright with that, because Bruce would still be there. 


	3. Delirium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for mentioned death and also common illness.

In the dream, Blockbuster is laughing. He’s always laughing, right up until he dies—and he dies because Dick let him, because Dick failed, and that failure curls against Dick’s chest and squeezes like a boa constrictor. It’s not the same dream, sometimes there are variations, sometimes it’s the Joker, sometimes the dream focuses on other things about that night that took a knife and carved a long path somewhere deep, blood welling in the red trail left. 

It’s the laughing that crawls under Dick’s skin and stays there—it’s the laughing that stays with him the morning after, all day, a constant background white noise, the soundtrack to Dick’s life, that laughing.  _ You’re a criminal and any day now your family will get wise to that, _ that laughing would drawl, you’re a criminal and any day now you’re going to lose it all. Blockbuster was right that he’d take everything from you and he didn’t even have to lift a finger to make it happen. But in the dream, Blockbuster is laughing, and the world of his dream shudders and warps and then he’s awake, blinking eyes hidden by a domino mask. 

Dick scrambled upright in his seat. “I’m up,” he said, but he couldn’t look at Batman, so he said it mostly to the Batmobile’s glowing blue console. 

“I left to check in with Alfred,” Bruce said, flatly. 

“Catnap,” Dick said, weakly. 

“No. You’re exhausted enough to fall asleep that quickly, you are a liability on patrol. Get out, and get some sleep. When I get back, we’re going to talk.” 

“Bruce, you’re being ridiculous,” Dick said, even as he opened the door and stumbled out into the Batcave. Bruce’s tone was not the sort of tone Dick could pick a fight with and win, as exhausted as he was—maybe Bruce did have a point, and then for a moment Dick was flooded with self-directed rage for letting it get quite that bad. 

There was no answer. Bruce leaned over and pulled the passenger’s door shut and the Batmobile roared out of the Cave, tires screaming against the concrete. Dick tore off his mask and flung it across the Cave in frustration—the  _ one _ night Bruce called him for help, and Dick couldn’t refrain from fucking it up anyway. 

Dick collapsed on the stairs and pressed his forehead against the stair railing, enjoying the cool press of it against his aching head. The room tilted on its axis so Dick squeezed his eyes shut and curled his legs to his chest. 

All he could hear was the laughing; that booming, inexorable sound, the  _ you killed a man you killed a man you killed a man _ it bespoke. There were other things, things he didn’t want to think about, buried deep there, so he focused on the laughing and tried to imagine what Bruce would say when he got back, the tongue-lashing he’d get. Or maybe it’d be more than a simple telling off—maybe tonight was the night Dick had overstepped for the last time, had failed Bruce for the last time, and Bruce would cut him off entirely. And Dick would have to walk away from this, his home, his family, everything he’d ever—his everything—

Tires screamed on concrete. A door slammed, and then there was the comforting rustle of leather, the quiet noise of heavy tread on the ground, and a hand landed on his shoulder. “Breathe, chum,” Bruce instructed. He hadn’t pulled back the cowl, and it was Batman’s gray-white glassy eyes staring back at him. 

Dick gasped for air, one hand idly fisting in Bruce’s cape, and he gasped again, but his lungs failed him. Bruce pulled off one of his gloves with his teeth and pressed the inside of his wrist to Dick’s forehead. “Fever,” he said, frowning. 

“Can—can I say goodbye,” Dick rasped. “I have to say goodbye. I know, I know I messed up, I know I—I killed him, I know—”

“Your fever is far too high,” Bruce said. He cupped Dick’s face with his hands. His ungloved palm was rough against Dick’s cheek. “I should have guessed you were ill.” 

“I’m sorry,” Dick whispered. 

“You’re delirious, chum. You’ve nothing to be sorry for.”

“I do!” Dick shouted. “I—I fucked up. I let Blockbuster—”

A thumb swept over Dick’s cheek, wicking up tears. “We’ve discussed this,” Bruce said. 

“But I—”

“Enough,” Bruce growled. “You listen to me. We’ve discussed this. You were cornered, and you were terrified. That is not worth your life, and it is not worth the distress you’re causing yourself now. I refuse to allow you to treat yourself in this way.”

“I failed you,” Dick murmured. He leaned forward until his forehead was pressed to Bruce’s. 

Bruce’s thumb stroked Dick’s cheekbone again. “You’ve never failed me, chum. You can’t. I will always be proud of you.”

Dick slumped until his face was pressed into the crook of Bruce’s shoulder and he said, quietly, “I keep having nightmares.”

“Led to a lack of rest. Which led to illness, which led to delirium.” 

“Not delirious.”

Bruce’s arm snaked beneath Dick’s, and Dick was hauled upward. “You’d have to be,” he grunted, “to think I wasn’t proud of you.”

Dick swallowed. Something about that, above anything else, hit him squarely in the chest, and more tears were slipping down his face but he couldn’t bring himself to care—for one thing, his head was pounding, and his skin was so hot it hurt, and his throat was raw as if it’d been rubbed down with sandpaper. He was thoroughly miserable, and that was a natural reason to cry; if anyone thought it was because Bruce had all but said his pride was a given, they’d be absolutely wrong, wouldn’t they?

Bruce carried him to the cot in the medbay and lifted him onto it—Dick thought about snapping, my legs are working just fine, thanks, but the truth was, he was mostly grateful for the help. 

Bruce patted Dick’s knee and said, “Stay there. You need fluids, and something to bring that fever down.”

Dick coughed into his fist. “I have no intention of moving, ever.”

“In ten minutes you’re going to be whining about how you could’ve gone on patrol.”

“Maybe.”


	4. Human Shield

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for gunshot wound and blood loss.

Dick spent the night avoiding Bruce, and he told himself it was for Bruce’s sake—he didn’t want to ruin the man’s birthday by striking up another argument. If a part of him said, _ it’s already ruined, Bruce hates these things, just walk up to him and tear him a new one, _ it was a part of him that Dick could ignore as studiously as he could ignore Bruce. 

“Richie Grayson!” a man Dick didn’t recognize crooned. He was balding, and stout, without being overweight, and dressed in an old-fashioned tuxedo instead of the slim business-style three piece Dick himself was wearing. “My, how you’ve grown. Never did get quite as tall as Bruce, though.”

Dick flashed a grin that felt like broken glass in his mouth. After a while a man learned to read beneath the words; it might have been an innocuous comment on Dick’s height, but what it was was a hidden prod, a  _ I think you’re Bruce Wayne’s illegitimate child, I think everything about you is fake to cover Bruce Wayne’s trail. _ “Never did. Unfortunate, really, because I was dead-set on it, as a kid.”

“Oh, were you?”

“Oh, yeah, sure. I used to climb on chairs to be as tall as him when he was lecturing me.” 

The man grinned. “Oh, fathers. You know how that is.” 

Dick’s smile, if possible, grew even sharper, more crocodilian. “Sure,” he said, and he stuck out his hand, intending to escape that offensive gaze as quickly as he could. 

The handshake never happened. 

A scream erupted from the crowd and the bulbous mass of Bruce Wayne’s public birthday party rippled forward, people scrambling for the doors of the venue—in the thinning crowd, Dick could see Bruce step in front of a man significantly shorter than he was, hands out and placating. A shot went off—a warning shot, because Bruce’s body didn’t drop, only flinched backwards. Which meant—

In all his years as Robin, Dick had only been caught staring down the barrel of a gun once, when he was seventeen. Usually, he was too fast, and Batman (much to Dick’s frustration) kept him out of the most dangerous cases, but on this night he was a hair too slow and he remembered thinking, _ thank you for everything, Bruce. _ As if, if he could think it hard enough, the thought would crop up in Bruce’s brain. The gun, seconds later, had been flung out the gunman’s hand by a batarang, and Dick had spent half an hour getting reamed out—and then he’d spent an hour crying into Bruce’s shoulder while Bruce held him, because he was seventeen, and he’d faced death before but never without any options left. Dick had been shot a couple times since then.

This time, Dick didn’t think—there was no  _ thank you, Bruce, _ or _ I love you, _ only the flash of the gun and the bullet shredding through his gut when Dick jumped between it and Bruce. 

There was the crunching of bone, a gun skittering against the floor. Dick’s cheek was pressed against the tile and when he opened his eyes he met wide, terrified eyes behind a balaclava, and Bruce was on top of the gunman and on him like a rabid wolf—arm broken in seconds, eye socket cracked, and a nerve pinch that rendered the gunman unable to move. 

“Not smart,” Dick said. “Not smart, that last one, why would someone like—like you…”   
  


His face was cupped by rough hands and then the world swirled until his eyes could focus on Bruce’s face. “Dick,” he said, tightly. “Shut up.”

“I got shot and you can’t be nice t’me,” Dick whined. 

“Yes. Yes, I can.” Bruce pressed his hands against Dick’s middle, and Dick screamed, and Bruce waited patiently for Dick to be done before he continued. “I can be nice to you. I can tell you that you are my world, every inch of it. But right now all I want to ask you is what in the  _ fuck _ were you thinking, are you  _ completely _ out of your damn mind?”

Bruce’s voice was cool, cold. It belied the raw panic Dick could see in his face. 

“This is a bad pep talk,” Dick rasped. 

“Oh, excuse me. Should I be giving you a pep talk for rampant stupidity.”

Dick grunted. There were wet tracks crawling down his temples, through his hair. The floor was warm and wet beneath him and he wanted to sink into it and forget the pain screeching through his nerves. “Fuck,” he hissed. “Fuck. Yes, yes you should, because this fucking hurts.”

“Next time,” Bruce snarled. “Do not—do not dare sacrifice your life for mine, do you understand me? Do not dare. That is not an even trade, that is not a worthwhile trade, you are precious to me—the fact that you even considered—that, no less, you did—”

Dick smiled. Bruce flinched, probably from the blood, which Dick could taste was coating his teeth. “Full sentences, B.”

“You cannot even fathom the—depravity of a world without you,” Bruce said, quietly. “Do not. Do not make me live that.”

Dick raised a hand, looped his fingers around Bruce’s wrist. “Maybe,” he said, equally as quiet, “you should—should unde’stand… that it’s th’same. Without you. I miss you. I hate fighting.”

Footsteps thudded, shouts echoed against the high walls. 

“Gunshot, over here!” Bruce bellowed. Then he turned his face to Dick’s and pressed a kiss to Dick’s sweaty forehead, and whispered, “Stay strong, Robin.”

And Robin did. 


	5. Fist Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for canonical parent death and violence.

Instead of cutting through the kitchen to visit Alfred, after school, Dick took his aching ribs and his battered face and vaults up the strong oak that stands outside his bedroom door and slipped in through the window. It was harder, with the tightness circling his chest like steel bands, but not impossible—and a lot of Bruce's techniques, the ones he'd passed along to Dick to teach focus under stress, came well in hand.

Dick knew he wasn't going to get away with it for long; but he figured, maybe, if he faked being sick, he could hide away in his room until tomorrow morning, when Alfred woke them both up early, clucking about traditions and whipping up pancake batter. It was an old tradition, apparently, that Alfred and Bruce shared pancakes on Saturday mornings, and it was a tradition Dick was happy to partake in, when he didn't have a busted eye socket and a fat lip and a cut just beneath his hairline. When his ribs didn't feel like they'd been through a meat grinder and ground to dust inside his chest.

Dick closed the window and turned to his bed, only to groan. "Aw, c'mon, I have to be the unluckiest kid in Gotham."

"I would argue that you are, in fact, quite lucky," Bruce said. His legs were folded, his hands balanced on one knee, as if he were posing for some sort of portrait painting—stiff and unfamiliar, the expression on his face a dark glower. "Considering you've only got a few broken ribs, and some serious bruising."

Dick dropped his bookbag on the ground and kicked it away furiously. "What gave me the fuck away, I guess."

"You would be remiss to think I don't have cameras on the perimeter alarms, and that that tree out there isn't full of them."

Dick groaned again. "Okay, fine, you win. Ground me, whatever."

Bruce's expression didn't shift from its dark glower, but Dick felt as if there was something there that felt almost abashed. "You would also," he continued, "be remiss to think that I have not tapped the security cameras in a few key areas, and that I don't have programs designed to alert me when a face that has a seventy percent resemblance to yours crops up on the feed. You would do well to remember that, next time you want to sneak off to the wharf to go street racing."

It ached, the way Dick's eyes widened. "You—really?"

Bruce nodded. "Really. These programs have a high degree of accuracy."

"Oh, do they?"

"I made them myself."

Dick blew out a breath between his teeth. "It's kind of annoying that I want to hate you but I can't help but be like, yeah, you would, you bastard, you know that?"

Bruce's brows furrowed, and he patted the bed next to him. Like Dick was a dog, that was expected to heel when Bruce called for it. "Sit."

"What if I told you to go fuck yourself."

"At that juncture, I would be obliged to mention that you've told me to go fuck myself at least twice this week. It's becoming a pattern, and I fear for your ability to originate insults."

Dick stopped. What he wanted, deep in his chest, was to spill poison—to splash his rage over every surface, to scream until Bruce finally lost control of his temper and started screaming back. But he looked at Bruce's face, the shadows beneath his eyes, the tautness to his limbs, and thought to himself  _ I did that, _ and he closed his eyes just to keep himself from crying.

And he started swaying, too, because Bruce had a hand on his shoulder, steadying him, before Dick even realized he was halfway to the ground.

"You've been acting off all week," Bruce said. "You don't have to talk to me. You can talk to Alfred, or I can call Leslie, or we can contact... someone else. But I do—"

Dick leaned forward until his head was pressed into Bruce's chest. "I'm forgetting them," he said, quietly. "I don't—I can't remember the song my mom used to sing, to wake me up in the morning, and I can't—I can't—I can't forget that. Them. It's, it's, they'd hate me."

A broad hand pressed against the back of Dick's head, and found a clot of blood there, and Bruce started working his fingers through the bloodied curls, untangling them absently. "They would never hate you."

"How can you be so sure," Dick mumbled. Bruce's other hand was pressed flat between his shoulder blades, and Dick felt the warmth emanating from it, and he felt the sharp knife of what he didn't say twist deep in his belly;  _ I keep thinking of you as my dad and I can't replace them, I can't do that, I can't, but you're always there for me and that's what fathers do. _

"Because they knew you. Because I don't think anyone who knows you can truly resist loving you. You, chum, are a force of nature," Bruce said.

Dick twisted his head so his broken eye socket was turned away—his eye was almost swollen shut, now, and the tears leaking out of the corner stung. "That's not true. I've been awful to you and to Alfred and to everyone. I went racing because I wanted to make you mad, and they were mad when I kicked their ass, and I couldn't—I couldn't fight back, because then they could guess I was... who I am."

Bruce pressed a rough kiss just beside the cut on Dick's forehead. "You don't have to explain yourself to me," he said.

"I, uh, I kinda owe you an explanation."

"It was unnecessary. Your thought processes were not difficult to parse."

Dick was silent for a moment. "I feel less bad about telling you to go fuck yourself now."

Bruce leaned back and looked down on Dick. His expression was pensive. "I mean, in the sense that I understood perfectly why you were... acting out. You owe Alfred an apology, still, of course. But your motives were understandable."

Dick squirmed. Going to Alfred, hat in hand, would be nerve-wracking, but Bruce was right—Dick had been a terror, and it wasn't anyone's fault but his own, and he had to own that.

"I am explaining myself badly," Bruce said. "I meant to—when I was a boy, I... behaved similarly."

"Oh?" Dick asked, slyly.

"I mean that Gotham Academy students use the wharf for street racing because I started that tradition," Bruce said. "Alfred will be understanding. That's... what you should know."

Dick cackled. "Are you serious?"

"I wasn't alone. I had help."

"You had friends?"

Bruce's mouth thinned. "Very funny. Harvey Dent and I—"

"You used to go street racing with Two-Face?" Dick asked, incredulously. "Oh my God, Alfie must think I'm a saint, compared t'you."

Bruce pulled Dick closer, wrapped his arms tightly around him, mindful of Dick's sore ribs. "He does. We all do. That's why you're going to take care of yourself. No Robin for two weeks."

Dick nuzzled a little closer. "Fine. And Bruce?"

"Hm?"

"When you find those guys tonight, the ones who kicked the crap out of me, go easy on 'em. They're not ready for Batman."

"Duly noted."

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! <3 and a happy Halloween to everyone reading!


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